


Because of the Times

by acornsandravens



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Birthday Fluff, Coming of Age, Dry Humping, F/M, First Kiss, Horny Teenagers, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 10:43:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acornsandravens/pseuds/acornsandravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She stiffens immediately, unsure how to react to his closeness and the feel of her hand in his. So as usual she overreacts and yanks away. “Don’t tease me. You’ll ruin my birthday.”</p><p>They’ve stopped under the streetlight, and in spite of the moths and the bugs he leans against the pole anyway. “What if I’m not teasing?”</p><p>Modern AU. Gendry is Arya's best friend. He's also her unfairly attractive older crush.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Arya is sixteen and sexually precocious. If that's gonna gross you out then don't read it (but really let's be honest Gendry could singlehandedly launch anyone straight through puberty and he's got a ridiculous amount of self-control in this).
> 
> It's a little steamy, but rating more for language, teenage minds, shenanigans, and the assumption that I'll someday write the rest of this.

 

I wanna, I wanna, I wanna touch you  
You wanna touch me too  
Everyday, but all I have is time  
Our love's the perfect crime

-All American Rejects

“But it’s my birthday.” she simpers, and Gendry rolls his eyes. He scratches his chest through his t-shirt and the hem edges up just enough to flash a bit of the dark hair above his waistband. Arya swallows and forgets exactly why she wanted to go to the concert anyway for a moment.

“Arya. Your parents have spent a fortune on your party and Sansa has been planning it for months. Can’t you _wait_ two days?”

“I don’t want their stupid party,” she argues. “It’s my birthday, and I want to go to the concert.” _With you_ , she thinks.

Gendry sighs. “Your parents would kill me if they found out I took you. Your brothers will kill me. You’re fifteen. It’s probably illegal, even.”

“My brothers don’t care if I go to a concert, stupid. And I’m sixteen.” she reminds him. Close enough.

“Your parents though, yeah?”

Yeah.

“Well… let’s not get caught then. Look, just take the money and get the tickets. We’ll worry about the rest later.”

Gendry is usually immune to her pleading and her most convincing sad eyes. He’s a stubborn asshole when he wants to be and doesn’t let her get by with the tricks that work on her father, on Jon and Robb. Arya’s not surprised when he doesn’t take the money, just disappointed. She leaves his flat in a pique. _What good is a friend if he won’t go along with your bad ideas?_

 

Arya spent all together too long in the bathtub and emerges waterlogged and irritable. She drops her towels on the floor and dresses for bed feeling very much a petulant child. Birthdays were more fun before she was stuck between “too old” and “too young” for anything she’d actually want to do. She gets a fancy catered dinner party instead, exactly what Sansa would have planned for herself with only a change in decorations. And she can’t help but feel spiteful and entirely ungrateful about it.

Her phone is going off somewhere in her room, and she nearly falls with one leg in her pajama bottoms, hopping on one foot to find it.

“Where the fuck?” she asks her surroundings.

Voicemail picks up the call and she swears. She loses more mobiles than the rest of the family combined. At least Rickon’s destructive tendencies save her from being singled out as careless.

She’s buried under the bed and impressed at the amount of Nymeria’s fur that’s collected down there when the vibrating starts up again. It’s closer this time, and she scrambles out from under the bed and flops down on top of it, tearing through the blankets and pillows. Her fingers find paper instead, and she emerges from the covers holding two tickets and her still buzzing phone.

12:03.

The phone silences when she picks up the call, her eyes darting to the window with the permanently disabled latch that her parents would die if they knew about. Not really the latch itself, but the fact that she uses her bedroom window more than she uses the front door.

“Happy Birthday, Arya.”

She stares down at the tickets in her hand and thinks she ought to paint her chipped nails before tomorrow.

“I-I-

Tears prick her eyes and she’s glad that her curtains are closed, just in case he’s still out there.

“If you get caught sneaking out it’s on you. I’ll meet you at the park. Eight.”

“Thank you.” she whispers.

 

“If they ask, you’re my sister.” he tells her as they walk to the line at the venue.

She doesn’t want to be his _sister,_ and she’s irritated that he’d even suggest it.

“I have enough brothers,” she insists. “And no one is going to fucking ask, Gendry.”

They don’t. No one glances at her, and she wonders if she really does look older. Her mother always says she dresses too old. Looking at Gendry standing protectively next to her Arya knows there’s a reason for her constant pointless attempts at being seen as grown, more mature, a woman.

She feels impossibly adult and yet small all at once tonight. She won’t admit it but she’s wondering if she’s going to get away with this. She might well end up grounded until her next birthday but it’ll be worth it, she suspects.

Between the opening bands a leggy dark haired girl in cut off denim shorts and a yellow top tries to talk to him, but Gendry stammers and answers her questions gruffly until Arya shoulders her way under his arm, up against him like she belongs there. He’s gotten an overpriced beer in a clear plastic cup and she sneaks a sip from the top while he holds it, uninvited and shamelessly interrupting the conversation. It’s mostly foam and she has to wipe her top lip when he points out she’s got a beer moustache, but she likes seeing her lip print on the rim where his are a moment later. After that the girl goes back to her friends and leaves them alone and Gendry doesn’t even scold her for stealing his beer.

Arya likes the fact that she’s the only girl he can talk to without blushing just as much as she fucking hates it more than anything. Sometimes when he stares at her he looks serious and considering and she has no idea what that means, that this man studies her like he’s trying to read a map printed backwards. Sometimes lately his eyes are hot and teasing like he knows things she doesn’t. And that makes her mad, too. He’s fucking clueless, and she tells him so under a protective barrier of bravado and bossiness that blocks out the vulnerability, the fragility of her half-formed ego.

(Unfortunately she suspects he’s not really clueless at all and that makes her feel like her heart’s going to break when she thinks about it.)

They got there early, and as the club fills up other bodies press in all around them heavy and… really very tall. She tries not to complain because Gendry spent his money on this, for her and the gift means more than any band ever could. Even if it’s _the_ band they used to listen to on the radio, before he got a car with a CD player and he used to give her a ride home from school, just after he’d gotten his license. The band on that worn t-shirt that he’s had since he was fifteen- younger than her now, she’s catching up slowly- that sticks to his chest if he sweats, the one that she’ll be able to see through after a few more washes.

Not that she needs to look through fabric to see Gendry’s stupid body. She’s seen him shirtless every time she closes her eyes since she was twelve and he used to play footie with Jon and Robb and Theon in the park.

Besides. Being here is enough, with the speakers blowing her hair back in the stale, smoky air and the lights dancing over them. She’s never been drunk but she imagines this might be what it feels like, alone in a crowd and feeling unified all at once. She’s drunk on the night, and her impossibly frustrating youth and the fact that he broke his rules for her. But she’s suddenly sad that she’s not older, not old enough for him. What she’d give for two years or a little bit of bravery right now. She could make him stop pretending she’s his _sister_.

His lips move and she realizes he’s asked her something. When he leans closer to yell she can’t think straight. Even when she manages to pick out his words from the noise of the band they don’t fit together in any way that makes sense to her.

 _Can’t they be quiet for a moment_? Gendry is whispering in her ear and she wants to hear what he’s saying that’s making her shiver.

“Let me hold you.”

She stares at him dumbly, and he rolls his eyes. “Up?”

Oh yes, up. He’d said up the first time but she hadn’t heard it, she’s certain.

If there was any chance of him hearing her she’d argue with him and say she’s too heavy, but that’s ridiculous. She’s little and he has more muscles than an anatomy textbook. Hesitantly she grabs hold of his shoulder and uses his thigh as a foothold to scramble up his back. It’s farther than it looks to climb up there.

His fingers curl around her legs and he holds onto her tight, careful to avoid the jostling crowd around them. She can see the stage now, but she’s only conscious of the fact that her legs are practically wrapped around his neck and she’s resting against him, intimately close. Closer than she’s ever been with anyone before. It’s not comfortable, really, it’s a bony seat but she’s damn well staying up there all night if she can.

He probably wouldn’t have offered if he knew she was going to get off on it. Arya isn’t even looking at the band; she’s looking at the top of his head, that mussed shaggy hair that she wants to ruffle with her fingers. His eyelashes are almost blonde where they catch the light and she almost sends herself crashing into the crowd leaning forward to look at them, and Gendry grabs her by the hips to steady her before she takes him down with her. She stays still after that, afraid he’ll move his hands if she squirms.

Eventually Gendry gets tired of holding her and nudges her gently to say “you’re breaking my spine”.

So she wraps her arms around his neck and slides down his back, slowly and torturously, relishing the feel of his strong body and the smell of his shirt- the soap in his shower, the slight carpet smell from being left on his bedroom floor in a pile of clean laundry.

“Watch out mate,” slurs a stumbling drunk, knocking into them and nearly sending her sprawling.

Gendry shoves him back. “You watch out. Wanker.”

The man starts to protest but there’s a vein standing out on Gendry’s forehead and he looks like he’s about to throw a punch, so the man’s friend comes and fetches him before a brawl breaks out. She’s more than capable of sorting out her own fights and does so regularly, but sometimes Gendry gets a little tetchy and (though the feminist in her is appalled) she likes it when he looks like he’s about to put his fist through a wall for her. At least he notices her, then. And, she notes gleefully, this is not any sort of protective _brotherly_ attitude. This is something else and she gets far more enjoyment from it than is entirely necessary.

“Come here,” he growls at her, draping his arms around her shoulders and guarding her from further contact with the crowd watchfully. _He’s warm_ she thinks deliriously. She can’t move; she’s stuck there standing up against him, careful not to brush his groin with her backside even though it’s an instinctive movement standing in this proximity to him. She hadn’t noticed before but he can tuck her neatly under his chin when they stand like this. Arya wouldn’t complain if he took it upon himself to do it more often, really.

Gendry holds her tighter during the encore, when everyone but them is already well and drunk and eager to send the Brotherhood Without Banners off the stage right. His hands have roamed a bit as he’s stopped paying attention. His palm is hovering just off of her chest and it’s like an exquisite pain, waiting to see if he’ll just _grab her already_. If her nipple gets any harder he’s going to feel it.

Arya looks at him but he’s looking at Tom Sevenstrings, not her.

 _Clueless_.

Arya focuses on enjoying the last song, and when all the guitars have been smashed and the lights come up it’s just the two of them again.

“Thank you, Gendry. I mean it.” she tells him, hoarse from shouting over the music all night.

“Don’t thank me yet, we’ve still got to get you home.” He grins. Passing through the lobby they go by the merch stand, and before she knows what’s happened Gendry has a palm full of tattered notes in his hand, buying two shirts.

“Here. Happy birthday.” he tells her, his eyes alight as he thrusts one in her size at her and pulls the other one on over his shirt just so he won’t have to carry it back to the car. It’s such a Gendry thing to do that a new fresh wave of unwanted adoration sweeps over her. She hopes this doesn’t mean he’ll be retiring that other shirt of his.

“You already bought the tickets, Gendry. You can’t buy me this too.” she protests, knowing how hard he works for everything. “Take it back.” she demands of the girl working the merch booth who doesn’t see her side of things at all.

“Come on, let him buy it! I wish my dates bought me shirts.”

Arya starts to retort that as the girl works at a merch stand she probably doesn’t need to buy shirts anyway, but Gendry is pulling her by the arm.

“Yes, let your date buy the shirt.” he says.

Those words take all the protest right out of her and she holds the shirt to her chest the whole way back to the car. She’ll take those words and that insinuation anyway she can get it. But she's going to have to get him something really ridiculous for _his_ birthday.

He stops the car at the park where he picked her up but insists on walking her back to the house even though she sneaks in far later than this some nights without him there.

“I don’t care,” he tells her when she says as much. “You’re with me tonight, and I won’t let you wander around alone.”

The night air is warm and thick with city sounds and smells, though, and she’s still a little afraid her parents are going to be waiting for her when she gets home. So dallying through the park with Gendry isn’t unappealing.

“I don’t need you to hold my hand.” she feels that’s necessary to add before he gets any ideas.

“Don’t you?” he asks, laughing softly, grabbing her arm and pulling her closer.

She stiffens immediately, unsure how to react to his closeness and the feel of her hand in his. So as usual she overreacts and yanks away. “Don’t tease me. You’ll ruin my birthday.”

They’ve stopped under the streetlight, and in spite of the moths and the bugs he leans against the pole anyway. “What if I’m not teasing?”

“What if I were the queen?” she retorts.

“Then I’d be in even more trouble for sneaking you off to concerts, my lady.” He tells her, grabbing her hand again before she can spin out of his reach.

“Your majesty. That’s what you call the queen.” she mumbles.

He’s pulling her closer, centimeter by centimeter until she’s tucked under his chin again like before. The double layer of cotton still doesn’t dull the sensation of heat coming off of him. He’s like a furnace.

“Arya,” he whispers, slow and warm. Coaxing.

If he’s a furnace, she’s like that stupid moth above them that keeps bouncing off the light.

She forces herself to draw up to her full height and look at him squarely in the eye. “Gendry, don’t fuck with me on my birthday. I’ll leave you here for the muggers.” she levels the ultimatum forcefully but she knows she doesn’t have the willpower currently to disengage from him and run home. She wants this too much to leave, even if it’s just a desperate dream that she’s held onto for too long.

He only smiles at her and there’s that look again; like he knows something she doesn’t.

He brushes a strand of hair off her cheek and his fingers leave her leaning after his touch, because she _needs_ it with a physical ache.

And the son of a bitch _knows_. There’s no way he doesn’t, and it infuriates her that not only is she in this position in the first place that he thinks it’s funny to mess with her. Her best friend. And on her birthday. He should be ashamed. No matter how much fun they have together she is only just sixteen, and she knows neither of them ever let themselves forget it.

Gendry cups her chin and tilts her face up to the light, but she looks away. She’s on the verge of tears and can’t say why, only that this all feels like too much for any one person to be feeling at one time.

“Arya.” he scolds. Then again, softly. “Arya. Look at me.”

“I’m so embarrassed.” she sniffs.

“Why?”

“Because _you obviously know why_.” 

“Yeah,” he breathes. “I do know why. I’ve known why.” The tips of their noses brush as he nuzzles into her. “And I’ve been waiting.”

She scarcely dares to blink, but she forces herself to ask the question. “For what?”

In answer he touches his lips to hers, delicate as that moth’s wing. His lips are dry and he tastes like that beer from earlier and a piece of gum he stole from her. When he pulls away abruptly they’re both breathing hard, and he presses his forehead to hers to steady. Just that one little touch and she’s turned to jelly.

“On _you_.”

Her heart beats faster when he leans back into her, letting his breath tease her lips until they part on a ragged sigh. This time his kiss isn’t sweet and chaste, it’s raw and passionate and unafraid. The feel of his tongue on hers is heady and unfamiliar and she struggles to keep up, eagerly tangling herself in him. But she’s out of her depth and she’s fairly certain Gendry is giving her a master class in kissing right here and now and when he grabs her around the waist and plucks her bottom lip between the dull edges of his teeth it feels so good she forgets what she’s supposed to be doing.

She knows he won’t take it as far as she’d like. He ends it with a line of kisses down the pulse points of her neck and she realizes her hands are in his hair, just like she’d wished earlier.

Arya is dazed. “Can we do more of that?”

He smiles at her indulgently and picks her concert shirt up off the ground. She dropped it at some point.

“Next year,” he promises.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things:
> 
> First, thanks to everyone who waited patiently for me to finish this. Be forewarned, it'll be earning the rating and the underage warning from here. I still can't decide if I like where it's going but I hope you do. 
> 
> Also I swear this isn't a songfic in spite of the fact that I subconsciously named it after a Kings of Leon album and can't write a chapter without prefacing it with lyrics.

We're never done with killing time  
Can I kill it with you?  
'Til my veins run red and blue  
We come around here all the time  
Got a lot to not do  
Let me kill it with you

Lorde, _400 Lux_

 

The year she is seventeen he comes in his trousers more than he did when _he_ was seventeen.

The dashboard clock is flashing 12:04 when she pulls the passenger door open and slips in next to him, dressed in black to blend in the shadows like some sort of burglar come creeping.

She lives in the sort of quiet neighbourhood where you'd expect the Starks would make their home, and there seems to be no one but the two of them out on the streets tonight. It's dark, save for the glow of the electric clock on his dash and the moonlight and distant streetlights catching in the strands of her hair that she tucks haphazardly behind her ear while pulling the door closed behind her, locking out the rest of the empty streets around them.

“I fell into the shrubbery,” she tells him by way of greeting. “Rickon was setting out the bins and I didn't see him until I came around the corner.”

“You've got a bit of it in your hair, just there,” he says, plucking out a twig that had caught while she apparently dove into the landscaping. His fingers go clumsy and tangle with her mussed hair, delicately trying to free the debris without pulling the soft, sleek strands.

“There," he tells her once he’s worked it loose. “Happy birthday, by the way. Try to stay out of the bushes this year. You’re off to a record poor start.”

If she smiles at his bad joking the darkness hides it, hides her intentions until she’s climbing over the centre console and too close to miss. This time it isn't her that's surprised; it's him, pinned to the seat with her abruptly in his lap, kissing him like she’s making up for the fact it’s been a year since they’ve done this.

“Thanks,” she grins, mouth curving against his lips and tasting of sharp mint and gratification. She smells faintly of balsam and somehow it’s better than a perfume, because it smells like Arya and sneaking about and he knows he’ll never walk past a pine tree without thinking about her, now, another tick on a long list of reminders he never needed.

He slides a hand to her cheek and tilts her head slightly so he can reach her lips better in the close confines.

Last time they’d done this she was shy and sweet. She's still sweet, he thinks, in ways that too many people would completely miss unless they knew her like he did, but she's not quite as shy, that's quickly very apparent.

"You're always the first one to tell me, you know that? Every year." she whispers between kisses.

Gendry wonders if it's because it's always him she seems to be with at midnight. He wonders if any of her siblings have thrown open her bedroom door in their nightclothes to wish her a happy birthday and found her bed empty and her window still cracked, just enough so she can get her fingers under the sill and creep back inside, later; if Sansa or Bran or Rickon has ever quietly closed the door and tip toed back to their own bed, keeping Arya's secrets to themselves and probably thinking they didn't owe her a birthday present if they covered for her.

He thinks that's what brothers and sisters would do, but he doesn't know any of his well enough to say and no one but Arya remembers his birthday anyway.

"Every year," he promises, up close against her lips, a whisper on his tongue but starting from a place in his chest that only she ever seemed to touch.

But those are thoughts for another day. “So have you decided?” he asks, nuzzling into her.

“Decided what?” she frowns.

“What you'd like to do tonight? We can't spend it here.” he tells her, much as he’d like if she stayed _there_ forever, all astraddle.

Arya doesn’t answer him in words; she knots her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and angles his head back so she can get at his lips, greedily seeking his tongue with her own. She's light in his lap and not as careful as she might be with her knees, but he doesn't mind; he kisses her right back until the top of her head thumps against the windscreen and the car horn goes off when she leans against it, startling one of her knees into his gut and almost quenching the urge to cup her ass and press his cock up against her right here in the car, in the street, at 12:07, with her hands unable to decide between bracing herself on the seat or reaching low between their bodies curiously, stroking, exploring--

“I want to kiss you,” she mumbles, not meeting his eyes, her thick lashes hiding whatever secrets she's keeping beneath them.

That she wants to kiss him and he wants to kiss her too might possibly be the worst kept secret ever conceived.

It’s all there, in the way he knows she has freckles on her nose you can only see in certain lights; in the chip in her front tooth she’d got at eleven jumping out of a tree to pounce on him. She worries that little chip in consideration while she thinks, and as he feels it against his tongue the habit seems to make more sense. A year was a long time, certainly, but seven years was even longer, long enough to know someone just as well as he knew himself. He could tally every one of those days with one of her wide, unguarded smiles or a snort of laughter she couldn’t supress during the most solemn scene in _every_ movie they’d ever gone to see at the theatre, the way their hands always seemed to touch by accident because it was just better when they were next to one another even if they did stand too close.

It's doing his head in, going from not touching her one day and now here, sliding his thumbs along the rise of her hipbones, holding her tight around the waist and not being able to get a word in because as soon as she stops kissing him he's kissing her.

“Do you really want to do this here?” he finally manages to ask. They’re so close he can still see the lights on at her house and under the steering wheel their legs are in such a tight tangle he's not sure how they're going to get out of the car unless Arya goes out the window.

She twitches her hips again. “I want to do this _everywhere_. And you did ask if I wanted to find something to do, just a moment ago.”

"I didn't mean me." he protests with such an utter lack of conviction even he doesn't believe it.

Because he's done for, really. First love is something to go about cautiously, with delicate precision, slowly, but he knows he won't say no to any of her terrible, wonderfully bad ideas tonight because she is _Arya_ , the girl he’s known since before he’d needed to shave, since before that summer she’d sprung up like a weed and he felt guilty that he’d noticed. Since the days he’d gone to her house to visit Jon and not her, since forever, and because it's her birthday and he seems to have made this into some sort of tradition.

And because currently she's holding him tighter than his safety belt, worrying that chip in her tooth and giving him a look.

“D'you want to go back to my flat?” he asks, a pang of anxiety in his gut when Arya frets awkwardly with her sleeves, pulling her hands inside them before she answers.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Gendry clears his throat then, and the corner of her lips quirks at his nervous smile. “You'll have to--you know. Driving.”

“Oh. Right. I'll just--” she pulls away and begins extricating herself from his lap, hitting the horn again with her elbow before she manages to climb back to the passenger's side, clumsy while she fastens herself in. “--try to stay over here.”

She does, silently fidgeting next to him while he tries to pay attention and not drive them over a kerb, still distracted by her in a fundamental way that goes straight to his bones.

His neighbourhood isn't quiet like the Starks’ and there are still voices carrying outside from open windows when he shuts off the car. Arya's fingers tighten around her bag protectively as they walk up the block to his building. His fingers curl into her sleeve with the same sort of innate watchfulness, a feeling that had first made him wonder if he loved her back when the question had kept him up at night and twisted him into knots whenever she looked at him.

Somewhere someone is yelling over the sound of a football match as they hurry inside, faltering when they spill into the entryway and the cold fluorescent lights reveal crooked shirts and swollen lips, a wisp of her hair that's going the opposite direction from the rest of it in an endearingly crooked way.

She takes his hand as they wait for the lift and he glances down at her as her eyes rise to watch the numbers count down on the lighted sign, bouncing on her toes impatiently. The little ding when it reaches the ground floor is sharp and synthetic, mechanical, and inside the lift the floor feels a bit sticky under his boots. Words and names and profanity are scratched and written on the steel doors as they slide closed. When Arya pushes the '7' it doesn't light but the lift obediently lurches upwards with all the haste of treacle while she leans up against the wall, beneath an animatedly scripted 'Fuck Off' scrawled above her head in black marker.

When their eyes meet not even the flickering lights of the lift can hide the rush of pink to her cheeks and the nervous way she looks at him with her hands shoved in her pockets.

“Are you blushing?”

“No,” she lies, chin in the air. “ _You're_ blushing. I never blush.”

It's all useless pretence and she knows it. He hasn't believed a single one of her lies since the day he met her and she informed him Sansa was adopted because her old family thought she was a complete plonker and left her in a post box. “You're lying. I can _see_ you, Arya; you're redder than a rosebush.”

“Rosebushes are mostly green, stupid.”

The lift begins grating as the brakes engage three floors too soon, and he uses the unsteady transition as an excuse to brace himself against the wall and lean over her accusingly, his fingers obscuring the obscenities. “I've made you blush before,” he reminds her, hand on her waist as he leans closer to whisper. “I could prove it, if you like.”

Arya swallows audibly at that and her eyes dart first to the alarm button and then to the corner of the lift.

“There's a camera.” she mumbles, but her head tilts up to meet his lips eagerly. Camera or not, her breath quickens to match his when his tongue is against her teeth, coaxing and stroking his way between them and flicking against hers while the floor feels like it's dropping out from under their feet.

She swears when he pulls away and turns her toward the closed doors, an oath well suited for its own place on the walls.

“I’ll get you a marker for your birthday and you can write that down wherever you like.” He tells her as the steel panels slide aside with a tinny ding and he nudges her into the hallway. She _was_ blushing.

He doesn't claim his victory and tosses her his keys to undo the lock instead, not missing the way she stubbornly tries three and doesn't ask which one to use, then bursts through the door shoulder first like she meant to batter it down off the hinges.

She’s been in his flat a hundred times and has no reservations normally about throwing her things down on his floor and sitting on the arm of his sofa or rummaging through his refrigerator for beer he’s forgotten about, but for an instant tonight she looks almost like a stranger.“You tidied up. I guess it really must be my birthday.”

She lets his keys and her bag fall while he closes the door behind him, wondering now if it might have been safer if they'd stayed in the car and not come here at all because he has a bed and locks on the doors and Arya for the moment  and the combination seems almost unwise.

“You might try and keep it tidied” he scolds, nudging her bag with the toe of his boot. “If I'm only going to clean once a year.”

She shrugs, the very picture of innocence. “I tried to tell you last year we could have my birthday every day if you liked.”

He reaches for her hand and weaves their fingers together, palm to palm. He’s not sure which of them he means to calm with the gesture but it doesn’t seem to be working. Arya pulls him closer and slowly the distance closes between them the way it always seems to, magnetically, like a slow tectonic drift that one day is going to make all the continents jumble back together again right under the two of them.

“Last year there were rules.”

“Are there rules now?”

“No,” he tells her. It wasn't anything you could put rules on anymore, was it? “Not unless you make them.”

“Slowly, then.” she decides. “But we can... you know. A bit. Not _too_ slowly. We'll just let things happen as they happen.” she says stubbornly, determined as anything; like her virginity is some sort of opponent she's about to engage in a cold war.

“A bit?” he asks. He almost feels like it’s his birthday as he watches the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath her hoodie, the way she watches him watching her and unconsciously wets her lips with the tip of her tongue in anticipation before she nods, before he angles his mouth back over hers.

He's patient, he's _been_ patient, he can _be_ patient, he swears, as Arya grips his shoulder for leverage and makes a hungry sound against his lips, a richly approving sort of sound. She doesn't increase the pace of their kiss; just breathes a bit deeper, a little harsher out through her nose.

When they’d kissed under the streetlight a year ago it had been sweet and almost innocent. When they’d kissed in the car a few minutes ago it had been heady and frustrated and a bit clumsy in a perfect sort of way, but this kiss is as instinctual and necessary as taking a breath.

His hands explore her ticklish belly, the soft feminine curve of hip and waist beneath her shirt, drifting higher while they kiss, like they'd been practicing at it rather than just wishing they were. He supposed if she'd thought about it as much as he had they ought to be experts, or perhaps the way she sucked at his lower lip was only beginner's luck, the work of Arya's usual precociousness.

Whatever it was or wherever she’d learned how it was brilliant. One of his hands slips under her shirt in the front, then the back, then lower to her bum so he can pull her closer. He’s quite forgotten what slow means and it seems she has too, caught up in wanting.

Anything she wants she can have, he thinks, as she slides a hand easily up his neck and into the hair at his nape with a breathy exclamation. She presses delicately into the length of his cock through the front of his jeans, uncertainly and then more deliberate as he pushes back against her. “Can we go to your room?”

Gendry musters one last assessment of his willpower looking down at Arya, that flush on her cheeks that maybe isn’t from blushing after all, her lips that taste faintly of Scotch mints.

And then he reaches for her hand.

 

Arya hadn’t planned, hadn’t dared hope she’d find herself here standing next to him and staring at his bed. He’d made it neatly, the flannel duvet smoothed meticulously all the way to the corners. She almost didn’t want to ruin it, but when her knees met the edge of the mattress she pulled him down with her and neither of them was considering the duvet.

Gendry’s fingers knot into her hair and he gently eases her head back onto the pillow with his hand cradling her, their lips never parting.  She sinks into the mattress beneath the solid weight of his body, hands curiously stoking down his chest, in a fine tremor when she slips her under the hem of his shirt to trace a path from his navel to the edge of his jeans.

 His skin is hot to the touch, smooth and firm. She brushes a curious fingertip against naked flesh and his mouth moves harder against hers until their teeth meet and their lips bruise, and this; _this_ was the sort of kiss she’d hoped for. A bit of precious abandon wrenched away, hers to keep.

He didn’t stop her when she blindly fumbled with his belt buckle—in fact he stilled against her with his breath harsh and shallow to let her work at it. The metal was rough digging into her, and she clumsily groped at his groin when she realized she could feel him through the thin denim, wondering what his reaction would be if she were to manoeuvre his zip down and slip her hand into his pants to feel him closer, bare.

At this rate she‘d never get the zip down, she thinks, clawing at the belt in frustration. “I can’t get the buckle.”

He reaches past her hands and deftly undoes it, sliding the length of supple black leather through his belt loops and tossing it to the floor with a clatter. “Better?”

Arya tugs him back down to the pillows. “Better.”

When he moves over her her legs fall open for him to lie between them, eagerness and instinct stirring limbs that had gone a bit shaky. He slides into the space she’d made, nudging her knee aside gently to make room; kissing every bit of her he can reach and touching what he can’t, hands and lips busy against her skin.

They move in mutual decision. She tugs at his shirt and eases it over his head while Gendry peels her out of her hoodie. He slips the strap of her shirt off of her shoulder and replaces it with wet, open mouthed kisses that make a shiver race up her spine and her skin prickle when his breath cools the places he’d laved with tongue and tooth.

When he cups her breasts her entire body bends to his touch, moving up into his hands eagerly as he tugs the fabric down; just enough to bare the edge of her bra. It’s the nicest one she’s got and hardly racy lingerie but he looks at her in surprise anyway and pauses to swallow, like his mouth had gone dry.

“Don’t let your mum find this in the wash.” he warns, tracing the bit of bright lace at the border of the cups. Arya rolls her eyes. He should know that she does her own washing, but she can’t be bothered to correct him.

He lingers there for an instant, running his thumb along the curve of her breast before he swears low under his breath and covers her up again, returning to touching her through the comparative safety of her clothes. It’s hard to be disappointed because he moves on just as quickly and every place he touches feels like a new discovery; the bend of her elbow, the tip of a finger that he sucks between his lips, a bit of skin on her shoulder that he roughens with teeth.

Gendry finds every rise and curve of her form, transfixed, and the heat of his hands on her skin sinks through her clothes like they aren’t even there. His palms are damp and sweaty, she notices; the way he touches her is reverent and hesitant for an instant just before he moves down the length of her body. His fingers fan lightly over her hipbones until the nearness to where she _needs_ him touching her makes her squirm against him and sigh his name, wordlessly begging him to go lower and biting her lip tight to keep from pleading.

Instead he bites her lips for her and leans his weight into her, hip to hip. She’d worn some sort of stupid tunic thing she’d found hanging in her closet and a pair of soft, thin leggings and with the tunic rucked high around her waist and only leggings between their bodies it’s easy to imagine what it would feel like if he was inside her when she wraps her legs around him and wrestles him closer.

For him too, apparently, because he pulls his lips away from hers and his breath is ragged against her cheek.

“Please,” she tells him, her nails digging into his bare shoulders. “Don’t make us stop.”

He laughs softly. “Would it ruin your birthday if I did?”

“It would ruin my _year_.” Again. “Are you certain you don’t want to?” she asks, knowing that if he gives in she’ll follow him straight to ruin and never think twice.

He pauses, and his hands feel heavy against her waist. “I’m certain I _do_ want to,” he corrects. “But we decided to wait. Didn’t we?”

 _A bit_ , she’d said. _Slowly_. Arya wanted to laugh. “It was a bad idea.”

“Changing your mind now probably isn’t a better idea.” He was toying with her neckline in a very distracting way. She wondered which of them he’d meant to distract. “Not really.”

“It isn’t illegal.”

“I know.”

“So…we could.”

With a sigh he reaches over her and into the drawer of his bedside cabinet. “We could.”

The box is a bit worn, the cardboard a little dented and crumpled. He’s blushing furiously when he hands it to her.

“How long have you had these?” she asks. She’s never actually held a condom in her hand before.

“A long time. Just, sort of… I don’t know… for _if_.”

Now she can feel her cheeks heating, too, and both of them stare at the blue foil packets wordlessly when she opens the box. Closes it again. She’d never seen Gendry look quite so nervous. Not with her, at least. But then they’d never had a conversation in his bed before.

“I just thought it might make things less weird down the road if we waited. Because you know that at least one of your brothers is going to try to kill me when they find out about this, don’t you? Even if you’re thirty when it happens.”

“You aren’t going to have sex with me until I’m thirty?” she blurts.

“No, I mean when they find out I was sneaking you out of the house to kiss you before you’d finished your GCSEs.” he explained. “If we wait until you’re eighteen if anyone is angry about it when they find out we can at least say we never slept together before you were of age.”

“Oh.” Arya thought that might work on Robb, but Jon was loads more protective and wouldn’t be so easily pacified, she was certain.

And then Gendry’s words caught up with her mind where it had wandered off into the future. “Wait, what do you mean ‘down the road’?”

He shrugged casually, but his expression was stricken with nerves. He always ruffled the hair at the back of his head when he worried and she knew he was about to do it before he even moved his hand.

“Well… if we stop doing this in secret someday. If you want to. Tell people, go places together. Things like that.”

“Things like dating?” she asks.

“I thought it might be nice.” He says self-consciously.

It’s only a moment before she answers, but the silence stretches over them heavily until she tosses the condoms aside. She reaches behind him and smoothes his hair where he’d raked it with his fingers, remembering how he’d seemed to like it when she did that when they kissed.“All right. Just don’t make me wait until I’m thirty.” she tells him with a smile. “I can wait another year if you can.”

It sounds like a dare.

He raises one of his own. “There _are_ other things we can do.” he offers.

“Croquet? Knitting?” she asks, squirming as his hands start to tickle where he holds her belly.

“Kissing, for one.” he reminds her. Gendry catches her lips and interrupts an indignant giggle, works his hands lower to her hips. He angles them up against his thigh firmly and this time when he leans down to kiss her it shifts her centre against his leg, against the seam in her leggings, the wet cotton of her knickers.

It’s anything but tickly.

With their bodies aligned and him rubbing slowly against her they’re caught up in the feel of rocking their hips against each other, thrusting and grinding into the heat. She can feel his cock against her and she knows she wants to find out what _this_ feels like without clothes in the way. She wants to explore all of him, touch everything and learn it.

Gendry’s kisses are deeper when he sinks against her and she kisses him back, faster, urgently, even though she feels like she can’t catch her breath. Her back arches off of the mattress and he moves an arm beneath her to support her, leaving her briefly annoyed that she’s light enough for him to lift half of her weight off the bed without even noticing. But his hands—god, his hands are strong and so are his arms and she sort of likes that he moves her without stopping to think just so he can reach her properly.

It’s like he’s everywhere, all she can see when her eyes flick open and finds the world too bright to look at, his eyes too close, too intent on her.

“Does this count as kissing?” she asks.

“Close enough,” he tells her breathlessly.

His fingertips trail across the bare skin of her back and she pushes against him harder, harder, and reaches down to guide his hips into hers, to ease the tension she can’t escape, from her curled toes to the fingers grasping at his ass in an attempt to get closer to him. It isn’t enough, not quick enough, not anything but a frustrating torment.

Her heels dig at his back in desperation and her muscles ache but she doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t think she can if he’s going to keep thrusting up against her like that.

But the friction builds the frustration into something tangible, something she can reach. Gendry was always telling her to be patient, and this is something that takes a bit of time to do right. She has to close her eyes and only focus on him and the way this feels, how even just feeling his body against hers gives her butterflies in her stomach and starts warmth sliding into her veins. She has to work with him to build the feeling, find a rhythm that works.

And when they find it she is overtaken.

It’s a slow heat, she realizes. Like watching paper char at the edges and curl before it catches and then suddenly the flames burst and burn and consume and you’re left holding ash, grey and crumbled against your palm.

Arya has done this before, of course, alone, but it’s never been a mutual endeavour and it’s never been a moment of vulnerability, of exposure, and certainly never with the object of all those feelings _right there_ when it happens. At the last possible moment she thinks that she doesn’t want him to see her face in case she looks stupid when she comes, but it’s too late. He sucks at her bottom lip and strokes his hand up her thigh to her waist and kisses his way from her jaw to her neck and then back again and she can only manage a gasp of surprise against his lips, clutching his shoulders desperately as it washes over her.

 

She’s quite lovely like that, really. Even when her eyes scrunch shut and her nose wrinkles a bit she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen and greed flares hot right next to lust on his current list of sins because he knows right then that he wants to be the only man to ever make her look like _that_. Arya’s lips part against his and she cries out, pulling away to breathe, the muscles of her neck sharp against her smooth white skin. Her hair spills over his pillow and he knows it will smell like her later when he’s trying to fall asleep, proof that she was really there in the first place and not the phantom remnants of a dream.

Her thighs go slack around him and one of her hands falls back onto the mattress as she sighs, her lips tilted in a half smile and a look of bliss and relief smoothing over her expression but she doesn’t let him go and pulls him back into her embrace.

His cock is confined uncomfortably in denim and too many layers of fabric, but that doesn’t stop it from feeling amazing, perfect, worth it. It doesn’t stop him from coming a moment later when she cups him through his jeans and the pressure of her hand and the friction of their bodies together is almost too intense on his frayed senses. When he says her name it’s muffled against her neck and strands of her hair catch on his lips, but she only holds him tighter like she doesn’t mind his weight or his rushing breath hot against her ear.

Afterwards he can only roll onto the bed next to her, chest heaving and his y-fronts uncomfortably sticky. Gendry hadn’t expected either of them to be quite so responsive but he supposes that’s what waiting does to a person.  He’d thought this would be less intimate than sex, somehow, but it isn’t at all.

She is pink cheeked and breathing heavy next to him, dishevelled and smiling and Gendry thinks it’s amazing that Arya is more dizzying dressed than any of the girls he’s ever seen naked.

If she watches him while he changes into a clean pair of tracksuit bottoms he doesn’t notice. When he climbs back into his bed he tugs the covers over both of them and she cuddles into his side, almost shyly even though they’ve spent the better part of the night wrapped around each other. “Can you stay a bit longer?” he asks, his lips pressed against the top of her head.

Arya stretches out next to him and kisses the corner of his mouth. “What time is it?”

“Late.”

She smothers a yawn into his chest and burrows closer. “A few more hours, then.”

Gendry sets his alarm with enough time to take her home before the suns comes up and settles next to her, glancing occasionally over at the slowly ticking clock. She dozes off quickly nestled against his chest and he studies her face while she sleeps, wondering when a few more hours will ever be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully that's what you were all hoping for... gratuitous kissing.


End file.
